“My sister’s fiance, Marc, who is the other deceased, suffered very, very hard from PTSD. And I believe it was an act of rage and he did kill her. It’s a homicide. . . . We don’t know how he killed himself, but we believe he set a fire in the basement of the house first and then killed himself.”

Ridley said her family is not blaming Poulin for killing Semenec.

“We can’t,” she said. “There’s no blame or anything like that. It will be rocky waters, but we all have a loss.”

Semenec was a “super fun, caring, loving person,” said her sister. “She had the biggest heart — hugest heart. . . . She was just awesome. That’s how I want people to remember her.”

Mounties are still investigating the deaths, though they said Thursday they are not looking for any suspects.

Poulin served overseas with the military, Ridley said in a telephone interview from Ontario. “All I’m being told is he was not the same when he came back to Canada from being deployed.”

She couldn’t provide details of his time in the military.

The military wasn’t able to provide any information late Thursday about Poulin or where he served.

Semenec would have wanted her death to bring more awareness to the problems of people living with PTSD, Ridley said. “She had a huge heart. So that’s what we’re trying to focus on now.”

Semenec, a personal support worker, had been with Poulin for about a year and a half, Ridley said. “They had big plans on having a good life out there. She bought the house herself and they were doing renovations. And she was trying to help him with the PTSD. . . . She never opened up to me about it. I’m just learning all of this now.”

Poulin, a mechanic, recognized that he was suffering from PTSD and was trying to get help for it, she said. “It just, I’m assuming, got the best of him. That’s the only explanation we have.”

When Ridley met and spoke with her sister earlier this month, Semenec didn’t give any details about Poulin’s problems, she said. “The only thing she told me two weeks ago was that they were happy, best friends, and they have a blast together. Now I will tell you that the second time I met him, which was two weeks ago, he seemed off to me. But at that time I didn’t know anything about the relationship. So I can’t say I should have helped because I didn’t know. He just seemed off.”

Ridley learned about her sister’s death from an RCMP officer.

“But we had filed a missing persons report,” she said. “She wasn’t getting back to her kids or us family members and we were waiting and waiting and waiting, then a detective called.”

A police officer also visited Semenec’s children, a 24-year-old son and her daughter, 18, in North Bay, Ont., to inform them of their mother’s death.

Semenec, 45, was the oldest of three sisters.

“I am the middle. I’m nine years younger than her,” Ridley said. “And then we have a younger sister who is only 13 months younger than me.”

Poulin, 42, was still married, but separated, she said. “He does have a wife and three kids who reside here in North Bay as well.”

Semenec and Poulin both enjoyed the outdoors, Ridley said.

“They liked it out there,” Ridley said of Nova Scotia.

“She had always wanted to be out East. She loved it there. It was kind of a fresh start for them.”